Umesh Garg

Professor,
Experimental Nuclear Physics

Research Interests

Prof. Garg's current research interests include experimental investigation of compressional-mode giant resonances and exotic quantal rotation in nuclei.

Giant resonances are highly collective states of nuclear vibration. The compressional-mode giant resonances provide the only direct experimental measurement of the nuclear incompressibility, a fundamental property of nuclear matter that is crucial to understanding of a number of nuclear and astrophysical phenomena, including strength of collapse in supernovae explosions, collective-flow in high-energy heavy ion collisions, and properties of neutron stars—the “largest nuclei” that exist in nature. Prof. Garg's group has been investigating the Isoscalar Giant Dipole Resonance, an exotic compressional-oscillation, also referred to as the “squeezing mode”.

The atomic nuclei exhibit a number of interesting and exciting phenomena at large angular momenta viz. shape transitions, quenching of superfluid behavior, order-to-chaos transitions, etc. These effects are studied through the g-ray de-excitation of the nucleus following heavy-ion reactions. In recent years, Prof. Garg's group has investigated the exotic processes of chiral rotation (yes, the nuclei can be left- or right-handed!) and “anti-magnetic” rotation in nuclei.

Selected Publications

“Isotopic Dependence of the Giant Monopole Resonance in the Even-A ^112-124Sn Isotopes and the Asymmetry Term in Nuclear Incompressibility,” T. Li, U. Garg, Y. Liu, R. Marks, B.K. Nayak, P.V. Madhusudhana Rao, M. Fujiwara, H. Hashimoto, K. Kawase, K. Nakanishi, S.Okumura, M. Yosoi, M. Itoh, M. Ichikawa, R. Matsuo, T. Terazono, M. Uchida, T. Kawabata, H. Akimune, Y. Iwao, T. Murakami, H. Sakaguchi, S. Terashima, Y. Yasuda, J. Zenihiro, and M.N. Harakeh, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 162503 (2007).

“From Chiral Vibration to Static Chirality in ¹³⁵Nd,” S. Mukhopadhyay, D. Almehed, U. Garg, S. Frauendorf, T. Li, P.V. Madhusudhana Rao, X. Wang, S.S. Ghugre, M.P. Carpenter, S. Gros, A. Hecht, R.V.F. Janssens, F.G. Kondev, T. Lauritsen, D. Seweryniak, and S. Zhu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 172501 (2007).

“Evidence for particle-hole excitations in the triaxial strongly-deformed well of ¹⁶³Tm,” N.S. Pattabiraman, Y. Gu. S. Frauendorf, U. Garg, T. Li, B.K. Nayak, X. Wang, S. Zhu, S.S. Ghugre, R.V.F. Janssens, R.S. Chakrawarthy, M. Whitehead, and A.O. Macchiavelli, Phys. Lett. B 647, 243-248 (2007).

“Lifetime measurements of triaxial strongly deformed bands in ¹⁶³Tm,” X. Wang, R.V.F. Janssens, E.F. Moore, U. Garg, Y. Gu, S. Frauendorf, M.P. Carpenter, S.S. Ghugre, N.J. Hammond, T. Lauritsen, T. Li, G. Mukherjee, N.S. Pattabiraman, D. Seweryniak, and S. Zhu, Phys. Rev. D 75, 064315 (2007).

 Honors and Activities

• Prof. Garg is a guest scientist at the Argonne National Laboratory. He has been a visiting professor at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and a visiting scientist at Bhabha Atomic Research Center, Bombay, India, and at the Cyclotron Institute, Texas A&M University. He is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
• Recipient of the 2006 Kaneb Award for Excellence in Teaching.
• Director of the Physics Department REU program.

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